We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Brent Schoonover. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Brent below.
Hi Brent , thanks for joining us today. Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?
I am happiest as a creative. I have been a freelance illustrator since 2006. Which is crazy to think about. It can be tough when you hang out with friends or family and they talk about the stability that comes with a traditional job and employment like health insurance and retirement funds. We obviously have those as well but its harder when you are the employee and employer. I will say though that the ability to be flexible is huge for us right now as my wife and I both run our own businesses and work from home. So when a kid is sick or we have just a road block thrown in our schedule, we can adjust and it doesnt require taking a paid vacation day and worrying how that will effect any plan time off we had marked down in the future. Its a trade off but one we are happy to have.
Brent , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am a freelance illustrator with my main focus of work being in the field of comic book art. I grew up in a small town in Illinois and just loved reading comic books ever since I was in elementary school. I just obessed over reading characters like Hulk and Spider-Man and would then spend hours drawing them. My parents and art teacher noticed that my skills were above average for my age and that I was very passionate about it. I am very grateful they encouraged me to keep doing it cause I learned later on that wasn’t always the case with many fellow artists. Eventually when I got to hight school my brother and I went to a comic convention in Chicago where I found a booth for the Minneapolis College of Art & Design, and they were promoting their comic book program. I was blown away, a college where you could get a comic art degree? This was a dream come true. So I visited the college and knew it was where i wanted to go. I go in and while there I decided to get a major in Illustration, as I really loved learning about editorial illustration work, storyboards, product art, etc. I realized it would be better to have a broader degree that covered all of those than just comic art. But I did take all the comic art classes.
Upon graduation I hustled very hard to find work. This was in the early 2000’s so I would walk to all the ad agency’s in Minneapolis with a CD disc of my portfolio and leave them for art directors. I was also working at an art supply store and doing a creator owned independent comic book at the same time. Over time the freelance jobs started to come in more consistently and the comic book got published. So about four years after graduation I was able to go full time as an artist and still am to this day. I take on a wide variety of projects from concert posters for bands like The Foo Fighters, Metallica, Blink-182, to drawing characters like Captain America and the Avengers for Marvel Comics. I love being able to wake up in my home, walk into my studio and just draw for hours. It’s my childhood dream.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
I would say over the years working in the commercial illustration field my favorite projects outside of drawing the comic book superheroes I grew up reading has been working and helping small businesses grow. About 15 years ago the craft beer boom really started and I had a great joy in helping develop the identity of several breweries by developing illustrations for their cans and bottles and merchandise. I really took pride in seeing how my work helped elevate a small business and make it grow. I really can’t help it when I am out somewhere and I see a small business that I think is really great but maybe could use help in the visual identity aspect of their business but reach out and see if there is any interest in collaborating. They may not have the budget of a large ad agency but that isn’t what it’s always about for me. I just enjoy helping place grow and succeed.
Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
I don’t know if there is a particular resource I wish I knew of but I will say I wish that fellow artists would had been more open and willing to talk about money and how to accurately bill a job or come up with an estimate when I was first starting out. Before texting or social media people where a bit more on their own. And it just felt like as a young artist, asking someone with more experience about financials was a bit taboo, and I know myself and several artists friends suffered from charging less than we should have early in our career simply cause we didn’t really know any better. Thankfully things have really changed. I speak to several young up and coming artists and if billing comes up, I am always happy to help share that info. If we keep rates low we all suffer in my opinion.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://brentschoonover.com
- Instagram: @bschoonyart
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BrentSchoonoverArt
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brentschoonover/
- Twitter: @BrentSchoonover
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@bschoonyart
- Other: https://bsky.app/profile/brentschoonover.bsky.social
Image Credits
Head shot is by Leslie Plesser. All artwork is by me.